Get Caught Reading Month: Unleashing The Power of Storytime To Overcome Fear
Where
New York City
Metropolitan Museum of Art
83rd Street and 5th Avenue
Metropolitan Museum of Art
2rd Floor, Ancient Near East Exhibit
Circa 2016
Battle scene of Assyrians storming a citadel Assyrian ca. 704–681 BCE
Located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Who
3 children ages 9-12, 10 Adults
It was a three hour tour, “The Woman and The Offspring.” We were 2 ¼ hours in, the kids were exhausted but engaged and I was trying to pull out every teaching trick, joke, technique from my secret book: “Never Let Them Yawn” to keep the children constantly engaged. One of my fundamental principles in giving any presentation, tour, lecture, when families including children with adults, are present is to keep the children absolutely engaged while sprinkling intellectual bombs for the parents. Once you lose the children, the parents become anxious and distracted, and the presentation implodes.
I walked into the gallery and stood next to the 4 foot by 3 foot gypsum alabaster relief discovered in Sennacherib’s Nineveh. I looked at the adults; I looked at the kids, good kids, but tired kids. We had just finished lunch and biology was now taking over. Sleep trumps secular and biblical history, art, and 5,000 years of antiquity compressed in a majestic museum. They leaned on their parents. A little whine escaped from one little girl: “Maaaa-om!” I paused, looked at the group and said: “Storytime!”
Instantaneously all the children, from the different families charged to the front of the group, dropped to the floor directly in front of me, crossed their legs and looked up in anticipation. Their eyes - wide open, filled with rapture, and no remnant of a yawn was left. The energy completely shifted in the room and the electricity was palpable. Even the adults were taken aback as they observed how this one word, Storytime, had transformed the whole dynamic of the gallery and the people. The whole event harkened back to grade school, when the teacher uttered the same word, “Storytime” and all the children charged to the front of the class, placed a cushion on the floor, and gathered around the teacher to see and hear about “all the places we will go.”
Why Reading Matters in Childhood
Do you remember the first time a storybook transported you to the big rock candy mountain with marshmallow clouds and honey dripped sun stained forests? That’s the magic we want for our children. Reading doesn’t just teach phonics, letters, sounds, and the organization of thoughts. It sprinkles imagination flakes, strengthens emotional iq, and empowers kids‘ imagination and reality to grab that spotlight to explore even the darkest room, the back of the cluttered closet, or under the bed where that Sock Goblin collects just one sock from every pair. By giving children words for everything they see, feel, hear and imagine, we transform a blank canvas, with possible abstract emotions and feelings, into the start of ordered thoughts and communication. We can turn fear into understanding, confusion into curiosity, and bedtime into a grand expedition.
Besides Building Confidence and Curiosity, The Math Behind Reading
When kids learn new words, it’s like giving them a big glass cookie jar. Every word or expression grabbed is a small victory that they can store forever in their growing minds. Instead of saying “I’m happy,” they are saying “I am exhilarated.” Instead of saying “It was nice”, they are saying “It was wonderful.” Instead of saying “I’m kinda scared”, they are saying “I’m petrified by the partially cracked closet door, because I don’t know what’s behind it even though I know it’s just clothes. Mom.” This kind of verbal dexterity turns fear into a manageable process of sorting emotions, gathering words, fun, confusion, curiosity, figuring out, and impromptu karaokes and lessons in phonics.
The numbers speak volumes according to a study called: “The Million Word Gap”. Parents who read 1 picture book with their children every day provide their children with exposure to an estimated 78,000 words each year. Cumulatively, over the 5 years before kindergarten entry, we estimate that children from literacy-rich homes hear a cumulative 1.4 million more words during storybook reading than children who are never read to.
Based on these calculations, here’s how many words kids would have heard by the time they were 5 years old:
Never read to, 4,662 words;
1-2 times per week, 63,570 words;
3-5 times per week, 169,520 words;
Daily, 296,660 words;
Five books a day, 1,483,300 words.
Emotional Literacy: Naming the Monster (Literally and Figuratively)
In 2019 I published a children’s book entitled “Talk About The Monster”. It’s the story of a little girl who wakes up in the middle of the night and sees the knobs of her dresser, or is it the eyes of a monster? The picture book journeys with the child using whimsical words and rhymes to navigate what they observe and the feelings they are experiencing. The premise of the book is to engage children and stimulate them to put words to everything they see. If children can do that on an everyday basis without fear when fear or anxiety comes, and it will, they already have the framework of speaking and placing words to describe what they see, feel hear, observe, and sense.
“Talk About The Monster” isn’t your standard…”Once upon a time.” It’s sprinkled with silly prompts like:
Picture:
“Let’s not forget about his teeth. How many did you see? Was it one and one and two? Or was it only three? Were they crooked? Were they clean? Were they hidden? Were they mean?” Illustration by Michael Hogan
The illustrations by the talented Michael Hogan feature whimsical, Seussical moments when the monster interacts with the little girl and showcases not just the emotions of the little girl but also the monster who is trying to navigate what it is feeling as well. Naming these emotions on these vivid illustrations slots them into the story arcs they can control and add to their repertoire of vocabulary. When you invite your child to talk about every creak, chat, smell and shadow you turn bedtime theatrics into delightful dialogue. Look for the hidden “easter eggs” in the paintings that will have you cry-laughing,
Literacy Campaign Strategies That Even Big Foot and Loch Ness Approve
Stage a “Monster and Me” read-aloud when kids and plush dragons swap favorite lines during Get Caught Reading Month.
Set up a “Whimsical Words” wall—decorate sticky notes with real and silly words and adjectives like “anxious”, “exhilarated”, “concerned”, “glitter-snorting” and “moonwalking.”
·Host a “Get Caught Reading” photo booth with absurd props: giant glasses, top hats, hand puppets, and inflatable book-shaped guitars.
This May, flood social feeds with your most whimsical reading moments—maybe it’s Dad with a clown face reading about broccoli, or your cat commandeering the newspaper. Better yet, let reading become a part of your life, and let your kids see you stop, pause, and read a book.
One of the greatest compliments I ever received was after a reading of Talk About The Monster to a class of students, a mom texted me a few weeks later and explained that: “I haven’t gotten the book yet, but my son was anxious over something that was happening to him, and he woke up one morning and said: ‘Mom, I think it’s time we talk about the monster.’”
If this blog resonated with you, please share it with others and comment below telling us your favorite children’s book, or what you are presently reading. Consider purchasing Talk About The Monster and let’s help kids everywhere talk about what they see, hear, feel, think, sense and let’s keep on talking about the monster… and bring it down to size.